Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is one part of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence includes:
Personal competence: your ability to know, understand, and manage your own emotions
Social competence: your ability to recognise other people’s emotions and manage your relationships with them.
Personal competence
Personal competence involves:
Self-awareness — recognising what you feel
When strong emotions arise, do I usually recognise what I am feeling?
Self-regulation — managing your reaction
How easily am I able to pause before reacting when emotions rise?
Self-motivation — using emotion most usefully for good
When I feel discouraged or upset, what helps me remain committed to what is good and right?
Without regulation:
You may know you are angry — and still act destructively.
You may want to serve God — but that desire is highly dependent on how you feel or how it makes you feel, rather than the will to serve, no matter what.
Quick question:
When strong negative emotions take over, does my behaviour still reflect the kind of person I should be before God? (Think of concrete lived examples.)
Regulation allows you to persevere in your service to God, beyond how you feel or how it makes you feel.
Social competence
Social competence involves:
Empathy — recognising what others feel
How attentive am I to the emotions of others during conversations or conflicts?
Relational skill — responding appropriately
When emotions are strong in a relationship, do my responses usually calm the situation or intensify it?
If you cannot regulate yourself:
You misinterpret others.
You project your insecurity onto them.
You defend instead of listening.
You escalate instead of stabilising.
Quick question:
When I am upset, what usually happens to the way I speak or respond to others? Am I still able to consider how they, too, might be feeling so I can choose my response?
Empathy requires interior calm and serenity. Someone with their emotions all over the place is neither calm nor serene.
Service to God can be personal or communal, but it is always relational.
Emotional instability weakens your ability to influence others in the right direction. In fact, it can lead others to sin. Remember the warning of Jesus in Mt 18:6:
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!” Matthew 18:6
Quick question:
How do my emotions usually influence the way I relate to others?